DMP Vancouver Team - Software Engineer Mastercard Employee Review

2.0
10 Aug 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Colleagues are very supportive of each other. - Office is very conveniently located in downtown. - Benefits are decent (Tuition, RRSP matching).

Cons

- Salary is very low compared to other companies of the same size. - You'll have to work with legacy codebases. A lot of the business logic is not documented which makes it difficult to understand the code sometimes. - Accumulated quite a bit of tech debt and it seems like it's the last thing they care about. - You have to do on-call support every other week. - A lot of processes in place to slow you down. Something as simple as restarting the server in the test environment can take a few hours just because you have to reach out to a different team to do it. - Sometimes you have to attend 6AM or 7AM meetings. - The sandbox environment which you use for dev work breaks all the time. It's very frustrating and it also impacts delivery. - You have to work overtime sometimes, especially nearing the end of a PI. - Very meeting-heavy.

Explore other reviews about Mastercard

5.0
24 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great culture. Stable. Analytical and rewarding if you find the right product.

Cons

Slower career growth. Not as influential

4.0
27 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Mastercard does a great job fostering an inclusive and supportive environment. There are genuinely good people throughout the organization, and leadership often invests in employee engagement through events, recognition, and culture-building initiatives. I enjoyed many of the relationships I built while working there, and there are teams that truly care about collaboration and supporting one another.

Cons

Compensation at the director level did not feel competitive compared to the level of responsibility expected. Career advancement can also be extremely challenging due to how top-heavy the organization is with senior leadership roles. There are a large number of Senior Vice Presidents, sometimes without clear scope or experience aligned to the title, which creates limited room for high-performing employees to grow. At times, it felt like senior leaders were being hired primarily to manage or communicate with other senior leaders, rather than drive meaningful operational impact. In product and go-to-market roles especially, priorities are often heavily driven by funding decisions. It can be frustrating when projects suddenly shift in importance or remain underfunded for long periods of time while awaiting senior leadership review. This sometimes leaves highly talented employees in limbo, unable to move initiatives forward despite strong momentum or market opportunity. The organization can also be very comfortable with the status quo, which creates a slower pace that many employees seem accustomed to. For people who are highly motivated and eager to drive change, it can feel difficult to navigate the number of roadblocks and layers of approval required to move initiatives forward.

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